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In his recent book “The God delusion,” world renowned atheist Richard Dawkins asserts that there is no such thing as God. He states that God is something that is in one’s imagination – nothing more.
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: he is jealous and proud of it; he is a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser…bully. – Richard Dawkins
Mark Twain, the author of Tom Sawyer, made the statement:
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it. – Mark Twain
The man known as the Father of modern Psychology, Sigmund Freud, said:
When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life. – Sigmund Freud
The man who invented the light bulb, Thomas Edison, mentioned that:
I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake… Religion is all bunk (nonsense). – Thomas Edison
To most of you listening tonight, these quotes are probably against everything you believe and think. In your mind most of you probably believe that somewhere there is a god who does love and care for you. Others of you know that there is a God because you have seen him work in your life and you have seen how the Bible is without question the Word of God.
So I think I can say with certainty that the area in which the devil is going to trip most of you up spiritually is not in debating whether there is a god because most of you are already convinced that there is one. The devil is not stupid and he knows this. As a result, his strategy for most of you is not to make you a full-fledged atheist because he knows the chances of that are very slim.
Instead the devil has a vision for your life that I think is almost as dangerous as being an atheist itself. This vision is to get each of you to become useless Christians.
He wants to make you a weak, discouraged, and a fearful Believer to where you never have the guts to ever mention Christ and his message of salvation to your friends. He wants to get each of you so busy to where you spend more time on your own personal pleasures/desires than on the things of God. He knows that if he can get each Christian to idly sit by and never mention Jesus Christ to anyone that it will not be long before Christianity goes extinct.
British statesman and philosopher, Sir Edmund Burke hit the nail on the head when he said that “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
Now, one of the reasons that I read those quotes in the opening was to give you all a better understanding as to how non-Christians are viewing Christianity. For the most part, non-Christians have seen the church as nothing more than a social click gathering and view many Christians as being hypocritical and self-righteous in their lifestyle.
After all, if Christians truly believed that all people go to heaven or hell, then why wouldn’t they be more passionate about bringing as many Christians as possible into heaven with them? If they truly believed everything that they taught, why wouldn’t more Christians be doing everything possible in their power to talk to their unsaved friends about God?
I give this simple illustration to many of the kids that I work with at the YMCA or Main Street. I ask them, “If I knew that there was a bomb that was about to go off in this room in 2:30 and I casually walked out at 2:10 without ever telling anyone, what kind of person do you think I would be?” And 10/10 they always say that I would be terrible. They couldn’t imagine someone being that cruel!
Guys, how much worse would it be if I knew that the world was going to end one day (which it will) and that every person who didn’t personally give their life to Jesus Christ would go to hell (which they will) and I went through this entire life or even the next year without ever personally leading one person to Jesus Christ and saving them from an eternity in destruction? I would be worse than scum and it would be the cruelest thing that I could ever imagine doing to my friends.
What about you all? Do you feel that you are okay with the amount of people you have witnessed to about God or is it something that you feel convicted about? If you are not sure how to answer that I want you to ask yourself three personal questions:
1) How many people in your lifetime have come to God as a direct result of your influence in their life?
2) How many of you have talked to one non-Christian in the last month about God?
3) How many of you are committed to doing whatever it takes to seeing as many people make it into heaven as possible?
These last couple months have been months that God has given me a renewed passion for winning more people to Christ. I confess that I haven’t done the best job at this but with God’s help I am making a commitment to make that change! I ask you all, who is with me?
Now I know what some of you are probably thinking. You’re thinking that all this sounds great and that you would love to talk to more people about God and get all your friends saved but you are asking yourself, how in the world am I going to ever lead another person to God? I’m not a preacher!
Greek philosopher Aristotle said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.”
I want to give you three simple habits that have transformed my life and have unlocked any success that I may have had in leading any person to Christ and will hopefully be of help to each of you.
1) Be a rock solid Christian yourself
I go to Bible School and as sad as this is I believe that I can honestly say that close to 75% of the students that go to the school have their devotions 5 times a week or less. You will never be able to teach others to grow unless you are rock solid yourself.
2) Develop a balanced circle of friends
You need to have both Christian and non-Christian friends. The Christian friends need to be the ones you take spiritual advice from and the non-Christian ones need to be there so that you can help them become Christians.
3) Look for opportunities to share God to others
There are always opportunities; you simply have to look for them. If you have a long bus ride to school, make it a priority to sit with a person you know who might be interested in God. Bring Christianity up randomly and do not be fearful. You need to come across to the people you are working with as enthusiastic and excited to be a Christian. They have seen far too many dull ones and don’t need to see any more.
Now, these three steps are all well and good if you can really put them into action. And my guess is that if you asked any ordinary church attendee, they would probably say these three steps are good. However, what most Christians do is they play mind games with themselves. They say things like “well, I need to get trained and educated in order to witness to people.” I need to know all there is to know about everything in Christianity before I witness to someone. Because after all, what if they ask a question that I don’t understand? I’ll look stupid and embarrass Christianity and they’ll never want to become Christians.
Guys this is why I believe that this group we are starting is so important. We need something that will help each of us to stay focused on what is really important in life.
In closing let me share with you all in a brief minute what our group Threemid is all about.
If you go on the threemid website, threemid.blogspot.com, you will find our purpose statement that basically sums up in one sentence the purpose Threemid. The purpose is to “build strong Christians who equip and help others equip 3 new Christians each year.”
The whole goal of Threemid is based on Matthew 28:19 when Jesus told his disciples to go out into all the world and make disciples of all nations. Let me make something clear. Threemid is not in the business of making just a bunch of Christians; we are in the business of making disciples. Do you know that in the entire Bible the name “Christian” only appears 3 times? The word “disciple” on the other hand is used 272 times.
What does being a disciple of Christ mean? It means more than just a simple belief in Jesus Christ. It means more than just coming to church on Sunday and reading your Bible.
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is being in a teacher and student relationship with the one and only true God. And as a disciple, your goal is to learn to think and act just as Jesus thinks and acts.
And so the whole focus of Threemid is to help each of you to act and think like Jesus.
Jesus said to go out and make disciples and so that is what we intend to do. The way we do it is by 1) Helping each of you develop into strong Christians 2) Making you accountable to a strong Christian 3) Helping you find three people in the next year find Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
When you get these three people, it will be your responsibility to teach them the same things you have learned from God’s word, church, or Threemid itself. It will be your responsibility to contact your three members at least once to twice a week to make sure they are doing the things that are necessary to maintain a healthy relationship with God.
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